


Chemical Bonds

by weeesi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anesthesia, Declarations Of Love, Doctor John Watson, Dubious Science, For Science John, Friends to Lovers, Implied Medical Procedures, Love Confessions, M/M, Sexual Content, Sherlock Being Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 00:37:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6173083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weeesi/pseuds/weeesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We should have sex.”</p><p>John decorates Sherlock’s empty chair with a milky spray of Earl Grey. He wipes at his mouth with the back of one hand and with the other, tries to set his too-full mug down on the small table next to his chair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "A chemical bond is a lasting attraction between atoms that enables the formation of chemical compounds."

“We should have sex.”

John decorates Sherlock’s empty chair with a milky spray of Earl Grey. He wipes at his mouth with the back of one hand and with the other, tries to set his too-full mug down on the small table next to his chair. It bumps against the lamp base with a metallic _plink_.

Sherlock, languid, a perfect tableau of relaxation, is stretched out on the sofa, blanket gone askew. He’s curled one long arm beneath his head and is staring up at the ceiling. Bare toes wiggle where they poke out from soft pyjama bottoms. He looks thoughtful. He’s bare-chested.

That had been a struggle. The bare-chestedness.

Actually, a lot of it had been a bloody struggle. Quite literally.

 

*

 

_Rory Tolbin was good with his fists. A thief wanted in no less than three separate jewellery burglaries in Barking and Bexley and Bromley, Tolbin was short and heavy and surprisingly nimble. John was down after a swift kick to his belly and was scrambling along the muddy pavement to try to reach for his gun as he heard the blow to Sherlock and the resulting whimper. Sherlock never whimpered, never, not even when he broke his arm falling three storeys from a fire escape ladder or shattered a bone in his foot after jumping from Southwark Bridge onto the deck of a passing ferry, and this time Sherlock whimpered. John felt his blood heat and craned his neck to look up._

_Something had gone very wrong with Sherlock’s mouth. Tolbin was struggling beneath two strong thighs, his arms pinned up behind his head, and even he was gaping at up at his captor, impressed by the damage he’d done. John met Sherlock’s eyes, wide with surprise._

_“All right?” He pushed down a surge of rage and panic and let his Captain Army Doctor instincts take over. Perhaps he also casually knelt on a pinned arm or two as he was tending to his patient._

 

*

 

_A few moments of thumb work and Mycroft had sent a car (black, shiny, odourless, previously bloodless) to take them to the nearest British-government-approved, spotless-CV’d, weaknesses-eliminated, sure-I’ll-work-at-four-in-the-morning emergency dentist, who turned out to be a woman called Rebecca Stone, who was very pretty and very competent. Sherlock was mostly silent as she treated him, his eyes huge round orbs that stared at John._

_John was doing everything in his power to not bite down on his fist. He’d seen plenty of trauma wounds, horrible injuries; hell, he’d seen people die, but something about teeth stuff… just, no._

_“I’ll have to administer some anaesthetic drugs before I continue with your treatment, Mr. Holmes.” Dr. Stone binned her used neoprene gloves and adjusted her glasses as she looked down at Sherlock._

_Sherlock attempted an eye roll, his lips held apart by the soft gauzy material packed into the cavity of his cheek._

_Dr. Stone pursed her lips. “I’m sure you would prefer I not detail the specifics of your current condition and exactly how inordinately painful this procedure will be in treating it if I did not apply some sort of analgesia. Your teeth—“_

_John heard himself interrupt before he realised it. “Yeah, I think we’d both prefer that. But you should know—“ he glanced back down at Sherlock, who gave John a slight, consenting nod, “that he’s a recovering add—he’s a previous drug user. Morphine and cocaine, intravenous.”_

_Dr. Stone kept her features expressionless. No judgment, just professionalism. So only partway like Mycroft, John thought._

_“When is the last time you used, Mr. Holmes?”_

_Sherlock looked over at John, and then held up two fingers._

_“Two days? Weeks?”_

_“’Oo. ‘ears.” Sherlock managed around his cotton wad._

_“Years?”_

_Two years since a month after John’s wedding to Mary and John’s discovery of Sherlock prone in a drug den. And after that: everything that happened with Magnussen. The goodbye on the tarmac. The aborted second exile. The Moriarty case. Mary and the baby._

_John shoved it down, again._

_“Two years.” John gave a curt nod. “But we want you to be aware of his history.” Sherlock blinked and nodded too._

_“Then a different combination of desflurane and nitrous oxide would be a better option.” And she set to work._

 

*

 

_John has seen Sherlock high a few times over the course of their lives together and it is a few times more than he’d prefer. He’s worried on and off about the possibility of Sherlock using again, especially after a few rough patches over that last year or so: when Sherlock didn’t have a case for nearly nine weeks and tore apart the flat in his pursuit for the perfect…something…something about chemical bonding. Sherlock had chanted “Hydrogen! Carbon! Water! Ethylene! Acetylene!” over and over so many times under his breath that John found himself humming a tune to it in the shower one morning, and then that was the end of that. John visited Lestrade not once but twice, and delivered a fresh round of doughnuts three mornings in a row to the whole Division. That week Sherlock solved four cases and John’s showers were peaceful once again._

_Now after so long, Sherlock is high. Quite high. Very high. The combination of nitrous oxide (“an oxide of nitrogen!” Sherlock had blathered happily in the cab) and the desflurane should wear off soon, although Sherlock’s prolonged abstinence from drug use has perhaps worn down his tolerance for such medications._

_John had managed to get Sherlock out of the cab up the stairs to 221b and walked him down the corridor to his room, where he prompted him to undress and re-dress his long wiry limbs in his pyjamas. Sherlock had smiled softly at John and sat himself down on the bed, eyes crinkling, as gentle and proud as a baby bird arrived back at the nest from its first successful flight._

_“I ‘eed ‘our ‘hel’, John.” Cotton in his cheek._

_“You have a wad of cotton in your cheek. You don’t need my help getting your damn trousers off.” John felt the back of his neck heat._

_Sherlock had given him a look that summoned something long tucked away somewhere at the base of John’s spine._

_John took it upon himself to help with the undressing and re-dressing, purposely avoiding any glance at the base of Sherlock’s spine or thereabouts. Pyjama bottoms were agreed to after Sherlock initially wanted to wear just his sheet, but he refused to put on a t-shirt, claiming it would “hurt too much.” Finished, John half-carried (“you can walk, you know, it’s your face, not your legs”) Sherlock out to the inviting-looking sofa, where he draped a blanket over said legs and promptly marched into the kitchen to make a pot of tea and clandestinely re-adjust himself in his jeans. Shamefully, he hoped Sherlock was distractedly admiring the dust bunnies beneath the table and not watching him hawk-like from his reclined throne as Pity Me, The Dental Invalid._

_John, satisfied with his tea making, poured himself a mug and brought Sherlock a glass of water. Sat in his chair, he readied for a long morning of probably watching Sherlock sleep and prompting him to keep the cotton gauze tucked in his cheek. Less than two minutes in, a bloodied lump of gauze landed on top of a spread-eagled and half-burnt magazine and Sherlock made the statement of the century._

 

*

 

“What.” John’s not sure if perhaps he’s hallucinating or otherwise also inhaled a small quantity of nitrous oxide. “What did you say?”

“I’m not keeping this gauze in. It tastes terrible and I don’t need it.”

“Sherlock, you can’t just willfully control your bleeding—no, before that.” John is minutely aware of the new pinpricks of sweat along his brow and the heavy thud of his heart behind his ribs.

Long legs twist so ankles can cross. Sherlock turns his head on his arm, eyebrows raised.

John swallows. “What did you say just before that.”

“The sex thing?” 

_Jesus Christ._ “Sherlock, you’re high.”

“And you, John, are not high.”

“Spot on, genius. Drink your water so the drugs dilute in your system.”

“That’s not how _water_ _or drugs_ works, John.” Sass and an eye roll: Sherlock’s daily special.

“You know what I mean. You’re high and you’re talking nonsense. We’re not—nobody’s—there’s no sex—nothing is happening while you’re in this state. And if we ever—did—you cannot be high.” John tries to swallow, a poor imitation. “I’m getting you another piece of gauze. And you’re keeping it in. Doctor’s orders.” John shifts his body forward, breaking eye contact with Sherlock to ease himself out of his chair. His palms feel damp against the old upholstery as he pushes away from his safe cocoon of plausible deniability and flees to the bathroom, closing the door behind him just after hearing a feeble shout from the sofa.

Which was a dangerous combination of something that sounded like “my doctor” and “has a nice arse.”

John busies himself with scrounging up some clean gauze from his emergency kit in the cupboard beneath the sink and tries to avoid glancing at his flushed face in the mirror. _Sherlock cannot be serious_ , he thinks, _it’s the medication. It’s the medication. There is no way he meant that. He’s a beautiful mad genius and I’ve been in love with him for seven years and it’s just the medication._

Steeling his mind and praying his cock will comply with his silent pleas for dormancy, John opens the door and steps out into the corridor with a handful of gauze.

A pair of very soft and very warm cotton pyjama bottoms hits him in the face.

“Too hot.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Sherlock Holmes. Put. Your trousers on.”

Sherlock is doing a complex sort of bum jiggle.

“Sherlock. Stop it.”

“I’m too _hot_.” 

“Then go have a shower and cool off and leave me alone. Here’s your gauze.” John forces himself to take one step, then another toward the stark naked consulting detective currently showcasing his goods to the greater commuters of Baker Street and shoves a wad of cottony fluff into Sherlock’s palm. “Leave it in, this time.”

“So no to my offer?”

“Oh my _god_ how do you not realise—” John wills himself to look Sherlock in the eyes and rubs the back of his own neck. There’s something strangely genuine on Sherlock’s face, hopeful even. “Look. Since you’re probably not going to remember this, at least I hope to everything in the fucking universe that you’re not going to remember this: I—I would, alright?” John feels the dam burst. “I would. I want to. With you.”

Sherlock blinks once, twice.

“But I’m not going to have sex with you while you’re high _on medical-grade_ _anaesthesia_ and can’t consent, Sherlock.”

“I’m consenting, it was my idea.” 

“I said no.” John insists. “Not no, as in never, no as in not now. Not like this.” Sherlock pouts as John continues. “And with my luck you’ll forget this conversation ever happened. I’ll never bring it up again and we’ll go back to how things always are, together and not together.”

“John.”

“It’s easier, isn’t it.”

“John—”

“You’re going to have a shower and then you’re going to sleep the rest of this off.”

John turns on his heels and marches back down the corridor, grabbing the discarded pyjama bottoms up off the floor as he goes. Sherlock is quiet behind him but he can hear the patter of bare feet on wooden floorboards and lino following his steps back into the loo. John tosses the bottoms the corner next to the toilet before he pulls back the curtain to twist on the taps in the shower stall. Silently, Sherlock steps into the small space to soak his curls under the cool spray. His eyes never leave John’s as he dutifully tucks the huge wad of cotton back into his cheek.

“I’m getting you another glass of water—” John turns to leave as Sherlock interrupts.

“Oh ‘ohn, ’or ‘ut i’s—fff ‘uck”, and back out comes the gauze, “For what it’s worth, I may be high but want to. I do want to too. With you.”

A spike of heat shoots from John’s chest down into his stomach.

“Right.”

“Not kidding.” 

“Sherlock.” 

“Promise you’ll remind me when I forget.” 

“There’s no way that’s happening.”

“Please, John.” Sherlock looks like a damp, desperate Q-tip.

“How’m I supposed to start that conversation? Two days from now when you’re arse-up in the Thames or something, _oh by the way, Sherlock, when you were out of your fucking mind you said you wanted to have sex with me?”_

“Yes.”

The steam from the shower is making John’s shirt stick underneath his armpits. “And when we’re sat having tea with your brother, I’m just to mention that when you were recovering from a serious medical procedure, you told me I had a quote unquote _nice arse_?”

“Yes and that I want to touch you and your cock and have you see my cock and—” 

“—bit late on waiting for that—”

“—touch me okay but John. Why not? We’re attrached—attrach—attracted to each other and we love each other and—“

“Please, Sherlock. Please don’t say something you’re going to regret.”

Sherlock stops and swallows, suddenly solemn. “I have too many regrets when it comes to you. No more.”

The air in the loo seems to evaporate. A loud thud from downstairs precedes any action on John’s part, and he stumbles out of the bathroom and away from Sherlock’s cloud of drug-induced honesty, his heart racing.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time John discovers Mrs. Hudson partially pinned to the wall by a very large case of oranges (“ _There was a sale on and there’s the vitamin C benefits, you should know, John, you’re a doctor_ ”), situates the box in the pantry cupboard, accepts a payment of no less than four mini scones, and climbs the mountain of anxiety back up the seventeen steps to 221b, Sherlock has ended his shower and is curled up on his side in his bed. No longer nude, a dressing gown hides the blurred lines of his body. He’s asleep and John feels both relieved and a strange sort of hollowed out.

 

*

 

John spends the rest of day and evening tiding up the flat and trying not to think about the conversation he’d had earlier with Sherlock. He makes himself a curry for dinner, forces his way through a mindless couple of chapters in a revoltingly dull paperback, and checks on the still sleeping Sherlock every bit or so. Once he makes a groggy Sherlock sit up to check on the status of the gauze only to find that the gauze has found its way underneath a pillow and chides himself that he was careless enough to let Sherlock sleep with it in his mouth at all. Their interaction is brief and deliberate, but John can’t help but feel some awkwardness slip beneath his skin. Sherlock, for his part, seems even more out of it than before and obligingly swallows a pair of paracetamol with a mouthful of stale tea after John pushes them into the palm of his hand. 

John pauses, watching Sherlock’s throat work.

“Um.”

“Oh, s’fine, John.” The duvet is pulled up over a bony shoulder. “I’m fine. ‘S all fine.”

“Well. Good.”

John closes the door behind him and goes to sleep on the sofa. Can’t be too far away.

 

*

 

After a fitful night of half-hearted attempts to work out what to say to Sherlock the next morning, and after forcing away several half-hearted hard-ons that were the result of considering what Sherlock meant precisely by _I want to touch you and your cock_ , John eases himself up off the compressed sofa cushions to sitting, the warm leather protesting by sticking to his exposed skin. He scrubs his fingers through his hair and across his face before peeking over to see if Sherlock’s door is open. It is. He briefly wonders if Sherlock is asleep, or if he is awake and still in bed, or if he is awake and not in his bed, or if he is even in the flat at all when suddenly those questions are answered for him as Sherlock comes bounding in through the flat’s door, fully dressed, eyes flashing, a river of purply-blue bruises starting to form just at the corner of his split bottom lip up to his cheekbone. The cape of the Belstaff swirls between his legs as he comes to a stop in front of the sofa and drops a pile of papers into John’s lap.

“Good. You’re up. Read this immediately.”

“Sherlock, wait.” John’s mouth is dry. “I think we need to—”

“Quit wasting time!” Sherlock shrugs out of his coat and tumbles it into a heap on the table in front of the windows. “This is important.”

“Where were you? Is this to do with a new case?”

“Not a case. Well, loosely, a case.” Sherlock rolls up the shirtsleeve on his right arm to above the elbow, exposing a bright yellow plaster over the tender hollow of skin on the inside. “Tea?” he says, as he steps agilely over a pile of books to assault the kettle near the hob.

John looks down at his lap then up again to stare at the back of a curly-haired head. Sherlock has too much energy, seems nervous, almost. High-strung.

_Oh no._

“Sherlock, please. For the love of God tell me that you did not just use.”

“John. Read.” The slamming of two mugs onto the worktop punctuates the command. Sherlock’s shoulders hunch slightly.

“Are you in pain?”

“Just.” For the first time since he’s entered the flat, Sherlock meets John’s eyes. The look is fleeting, but it’s there: pleading. _Please._

John looks down again at the pile of papers. All typed, the first one reads:

 

 

**Holmes, William Sherlock Scott**

**Male**

**DOB: 6 th Jan 1977**

**1.83 m**

**74 kg**

**Tobacco use: on occasion**

 

**Holmes--Page 1: Chemistry Panel**

**Alanine aminotransferase**  
21 IU/L

 **Albumin**  
4.0 g/dL

 **A/G ratio**  
1.2

 **Alkaline phosphatase**  
67 IU/L

 **Aspartate aminotransferase**  
20 IU/L

 **Bilirubin**  
0.8 mg/dL

 **BUN**  
12 mg/dL

 **BUN/creatinine ratio**  
18:1

 **Calcium**  
9.0 mg/dL

 **Chloride**  
98 mEq/L

 **Creatinine**  
0.9 mg/dL

 **Fasting glucose**  
70 mg/dL

 **Phosphorus**  
5 mg/dL

 **Potassium**  
4.2 mEq/L

 **Sodium**  
133 mEq/L

 

**Holmes--Page 2: Lipid Panel**

 

“Earl Grey or Lemon?” comes Sherlock’s voice from the kitchen. 

“Huh—uh, Earl please.”

**Total Cholesterol**  
198 mg/dL

 **Triglycerides**  
162 mg/dL

**HDL cholesterol**

60 mg/dL

**LDL cholesterol**

102 mg/dL

**Total cholesterol/HDL ratio**

5 to 1

 

**Holmes--Page 3: Complete Blood Count (CBC)**

**WBC leukocyte count**  
8,800 cmm

**WBC differential count**

Neutrophils: 50%

Lymphocytes: 40%

Monocytes: 8%

Eosinophils: 1.5%

Basophils: 0.5%  


**RBC erythrocyte count**  
5.2 million cmm

 **Haematocrit (Hct)**  
42%

 **Haemoglobin (Hgb)**  
13 g/dL

 **Mean corpuscular volume (MCV)**  
80 femtoliters

 **Mean corpuscular haemoglobin (MCH)**  
27 picograms

 **Mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration (MCHC)**  
38%

 **Red cell distribution width (RDW or RCDW)**  
12%

 **Platelet count**  
230,000 mL

 **Mean Platelet Volume (MPV)**  
9.5 femtoliters

 

**Holmes--Page 4: Additional Tests**

**Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH)**

1.2

 **Vitamin D**  
40 ng/mL

**Desflurane**

0 ng/mL

 

“Your tea, John.” Sherlock is holding out a steaming mug at John’s eye level. John reaches for it in slow motion as he re-shuffles the papers and runs his tongue over his bottom lip. 

Sherlock sits down on the table opposite John’s bent knees as he takes a slurpy sip from his own mug. “Would’ve done it myself but couldn’t find an adequate vial. Or a sufficient haemoglobin processor.” 

“High phosphorus, low haematocrit, low MCH, high MCHC.“ John clucks. “Borderline malnutrition and anaemia, Sherlock. We need to monitor this. High WBC leukocytes, though I suppose that might be due to fighting infection—”

“Oh for god’s sake,” Sherlock says, and leans forward to kiss John on the mouth.

The kiss isn’t forceful, not really, and it’s not gentle either, but Sherlock’s lips are on John’s lips and the papers flutter to the floor between John’s legs. Sherlock works a palm over the curve of John’s jaw and presses the tip of his nose into the skin by the side of John’s nose and dares a tiny bit of tongue against John’s own between the open parentheses of their mouths. John breathes and lets his heart pound in the base of his throat as he kisses back and tastes the split in Sherlock’s bottom lip.

Hours pass, or possibly fifteen seconds, or possibly somewhere in-between the two.

“Your—your mouth—” John gasps out. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“No,” Sherlock says, “it doesn’t.”


	4. Chapter 4

They kiss for a few more moments, until John realises that 1) he is in fact kissing Sherlock Holmes and 2) it was Sherlock Holmes’ idea to do the kissing.

He breaks off the kiss, hesitantly. Sherlock’s pupils are heated hollows burning into his skin.

“So.” John ventures.

“So.”

“You remember.”

“Yes.”

“And you went for a blood draw this morning.”

“Molly was a bit miffed at 6am on a Saturday but she obliged.”

John swallows.

“And that plaster in your elbow is from the blood draw.”

Sherlock’s cheekbones glisten peach-pink. “Yes.”

“The blood test was to show that you’ve no external drugs in your system.”

“Desflurane is a chemical compound and a volatile agent with a molecular formula of C3-H2-F6-O. There’s currently nothing with that molecular structure in my blood, no desflurane in my system. Nitrous oxide is expelled by the lungs shortly after administration, no long term effects.”

John is keenly aware of Sherlock’s body heat. John’s knees are pressed to the inside of Sherlock’s thighs. Warm.

“So you wanted me to have proof that you’re not high—”

“—when I tell you that I meant everything I said yesterday.”

John tries to swallow unsuccessfully.            

“Listen. You know as well as I do that there are chemical bonds and intermolecular forces that connect atoms in blood molecules.”

“Yes.”

“Well you’re like the sodium cations in my blood.”

It makes John’s stomach flutter. “The major positively-charged ions.”

“We’re two halves of an ionic bond, John.”

It’s the sentence John realises he’s been waiting his whole life to hear. Once he thought _Sherlock is actually a girl’s name_ was the closest he would ever come, but no. It was this sentence, all along.

Sherlock waits, the pause lingering as he slowly reaches for John’s hand curled open on his thigh.

“And so.” He looks up at John through his eyelashes. “Do you?”

John feels stretched thin, every nerve in his body taut, alert, humming. He tries swallowing again and succeeds. His mouth tastes like the inside of Sherlock’s mouth.

“Do I want to. Do I want to touch you.” His voice comes out hoarse, bare.

“Mm.” Sherlock nods.

“Do I want to kiss you.”

“Mm.”

“To touch you. And see—see your body and your cock and touch.”

“Mm hm.”

“Do I—do I want you to touch me.”

“Hm.”

“Do I want you to want me.”

John was on fire. Sherlock’s face seemed milimetres away, swollen lips. Dark.

“Mmm.”

“Sherlock. Do you think I ought to—I ought to take you apart, and you. You take me apart.” Hot breath on his skin, close.

Another nod.

“Do.”

“Do I what, John?”

Barely audible, John says, “do you love me." 

“Have always.”

All of the air in John’s lungs escapes at once.

Floods of love and lust that once lingered in tidepools deep inside his body overflow their borders and rush into his veins. He quite nearly topples Sherlock to the floor as he lunges in for another kiss at the same Sherlock reaches for him. The kisses grow hungry and heavy in each other’s mouths. Lucky for John he’s in the advantageous position of wearing only a vest and his pants but Sherlock is fully clothed and that is simply unacceptable.

“Your. Take off.” John attempts.

They wrestle off the £150 button-down and the bespoke trousers until they are pants on pants and skin on vest and then realise the door to the flat is still propped wide open.

“Perhaps.”

“I quite agree,” Sherlock mumbles as he breezily rises to slam the door shut and then hurriedly crawls back over John’s legs, straddling bare thighs as he cranes his neck down for another round of kisses.

John breaks away. “Honestly Sherlock, your mouth must hurt.”

“I’ve severely overestimated your intelligence if you think a little pain would cause me to pass up the chance to kiss you after all these years.” Sherlock leans in to whisper against John’s ear. “I wouldn’t care if I didn’t even have a mouth.”

“Okay well that’s not—but I appreciate the sentiment.” John smiles and rubs his hands across the stretch of Sherlock’s back and over his ribs. “I do.”

“Good. Now stop philosophising and put your mouth back on my mouth.”

They hold each other close and kiss for a while until they can’t ignore the elephants in the room any longer. John reaches into the flap of Sherlock’s posh pants and touches satiny skin, hot and smooth against his fingertips. He hesitates.

“Is this too much, right now? Are you sure?”

“John.” Sherlock rolls his hips against John’s erection as he pulls back to study his eyes. “Ionic bonds are very strong, and melt only under extremely high temperatures, but have difficulty bridging cracks." 

“This shouldn’t be hot, but naturally it is, coming out of your mouth.”

Sherlock smirks and drops an octave. “It’s not that they can’t, only that it’s difficult. It takes work, and time, and skill for an ionic bond to cross a fracture.” He plants a kiss on John’s top lip and traces the cleft of his chin with a fingertip. His erection presses into the curve of John’s hip and John feels his pulse flutter in his wrists. “I meant it when I said no more regrets. No more cracks or fractures.”

“There’ll be cracks. It’s part of life, Sherlock. But I want to cross them with you,” John sighs with a smile. Sherlock returns it with a nod and one of his own, a rare, soft thing that John loves.

“Now, if you’re amenable, I think we should have sex. Or at least keep snogging.”

“I’m amenable.” John recaptures Sherlock’s broken mouth with his own.

They rock against each other, a rhythm broken only when John slides his fingers beneath two waistbands to let their cocks free. He gathers them up in one hand and works, tugging slowly, then more quickly once Sherlock wraps his own fist around John’s, dipping into little pools of precome, stroking skin against skin, fucking into their intertwined fingers, eyes dark and plummy lips wet with shared spit. John rubs his thumb over and over the curve of Sherlock’s jaw, gentle, _gentle,_ and Sherlock breathes into John’s mouth and slides between John’s fingers and moans, _moans, Sherlock moans,_ and they think of each other’s deepest secret which is now their secret which isn’t a secret at all.

They love each other and that’s perfectly the best thing in the universe.

John gasps against Sherlock’s mouth as he comes with a burst of pleasure down his spine, Sherlock’s hand soaked with precome and come and then a few minutes later Sherlock drops his head onto John’s shoulder as he shakes and shakes and shakes, eyes rolled back, then shut. Breathing. Kisses pressed to the side of John’s neck. Limbs somehow folded close around John’s body.

Bonded.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to wikipedia and dubious sites on the interwebs for the medical/scientific info presented herein. Sherlock is good at science, I am not. But I tried. 
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
